Love is a language often unspoken
by ExquisiteRose
Summary: "Shassie- five times Lassiter said "I love you" with his actions, and one time he finally said it with his words."


Prompt from an anon on my tumblr.

This is the first time I've done a prompt like this, so I hope it turned out well!

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1.

It had been a long day.

Shawn and Gus had chased a killer-or, more honestly, had a killer chase them-for the majority of the day. Lassie and Jules had shown up, fortunately, minutes before unhinged bad guy took them out.

Despite brushing off near-death like it was nothing and generally throwing himself into the next case like the trauma from the last one was no more than a few cobwebs to be dusted off and done with, Shawn had been feeling the fall of the adrenaline more than the high lately.

After the arrest was made, the handcuffs slapped on the wrists of Mister Deranged, Shawn didn't feel much like pretending he was indifferent to the near death encounter. Gus looked traumatised, but Shawn couldn't blame him.  
The killer had had his gun pointed at Shawn's temple when Lassie and Jules broke down the doors, his finger a hair's breadth away from squeezing the trigger, before Lassie tackled the killer to the ground, Jules covering Lassiter as he threw protocol aside and took down the assailant with the strength of a linebacker, probably harder than he strictly needed to for he guy to go down-and Lassiter never did more or less than the badge dictated.

Shawn was mostly just glad he wasn't dead. He was going to thank Lassiter properly once he could understand he and Gus were still alive, but Lassiter approached him first.

"Spencer," Lassiter greeted, lips pursed-but that was probably from the purpling bruise on his forehead. The attacker only got one hit on Lassiter, and it had happened to be with the butt of the gun.

Lassiter's eyes darted across his body, checking him over. Shawn rolled his eyes slightly. The paramedics had already given him a clean bill of health. He was fine.

"Look," Shawn said, doing a slow turn, arms extended, "not one part of my psychic body is harmed. I'm still functioning, see," and Shawn grabbed Lassiter's head between his hands and said, "for instance, right now, you are thinking, 'What would I do without you? Who would solve the cases while having good hair and being witty at the same time?'"

But Lassiter didn't shake Shawn off like he usually did, and he didn't scowl at him or yell-instead, his lips twitched like he was going to smile and he replied, "For once, you're almost exactly right," and Shawn was left wondering what part of that the 'almost' was as Lassie walked away.

2.

Shawn was slightly suspicious.

Lately, a lot of their private cases had been overlapping with the station's cases, and the Chief had been asking him to help on cases more often. While there was no way Shawn would look this gift horse in the face (Gus would kill him if he didn't take the cases, since Shawn was basically free-spending Psych money and living off of Gus' good will), he didn't quite understand.

Some of the cases-not all of them, but enough-were not cases Shawn thought they would really be needed on, and while Shawn liked to make jokes about the inability of the station to solve cases without him, they were actually pretty competent most of the time. So that left him wondering why, exactly, it seemed necessary for him to tag along on cases that were basically open-and-shut.

What made Shawn switch from just thinking it was weird to suspicion was that Lassiter didn't seem to be annoyed by his presence at all, which was weird because, when Lassie was very determined, he could be annoyed just by Shawn's voice in the general vicinity of his crime scene.

So Shawn set out to try to get Lassie annoyed, not to get fired from the cases (they needed the money) but because Lassie seeming completely indifferent to his presence or sometimes smiling-little half-twitches of the lip and crinkles at the corners of his eyes-and telling Shawn, "Good work" was one too many strange occurrences.

Even Jules seemed suspicious, but she didn't have anything to report (he'd recruited her for information after the third time Lassie smiled at him, but all Lassie had said was, "He's a complete fraud, but he gets the job done, O'Hara.").

Trying to annoy Lassiter didn't work, however. All it really did was make Lassiter break out into an actual full-blown smile, even when Shawn called him Lassie, so Shawn let his suspicion go and started to smile back.

Whatever was making Lassie smile at him like that Shawn was not going to stop, especially if it was getting him more cases and letting him see that smile more often.

3.

It'd probably been a month or two into their relationship when Shawn noticed it.  
Lassie let him drive and was completely relaxed when he did. Actually, it even went a step further-he actually chose to let Shawn drive more often than not.

Even when Lassiter let Jules drive (which was few and far between, and only at Jules' insistence), he was slightly agitated. It wasn't that he didn't trust her-trust meant everything in a partner to Lassie-or because she was a woman, like some police officers in the station speculated and rumored, but because Lassiter liked to be in control of his life, and that extended to work.

Most people learned to respect that boundary, excepting occasionally Jules. Shawn, however, never really respected anyone's boundaries, especially not Lassie's, and when Lassiter began to trust Shawn, he trusted all of Shawn, with all of Shawn's boundary stepping and flaky ways.

It never occurred to Shawn just how much Lassie trusted him until he looked over when they were heading to Shawn's after they closed a difficult case. Lassiter had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, unfinished reports tucked to his chest, drool on his lip.

When they parked, Shawn reached over and gently shook Lassie out of his sleep, Lassie stirring slowly and calmly, a nice change from the hyper-alert Lassiter in the beginning. Lassiter smiled sleepily at him, and Shawn tossed Lassie the keys.

4.

"Stay." Shawn was halfway dressed, pants pulled up but unbuttoned, head popping into his shirt, but he heard the whisper as clear as if Carlton had yelled it.

He paused, then slipped his arms into his shirt as well. Then he sat on the edge of the bed next to Carlton, who was only in his boxers.

Shawn had been the one to start their silent agreement. Their first night together, Shawn had left before he could fall asleep. While he hadn't left while Lassie was sleeping (he had a lot more respect for Carlton than that), he did not even give the pretense of possibly staying the night, and Carlton had been on the same page.

Shawn had still been unsure about commitment, and Lassiter didn't have the best track record when it came to keeping long-term relationships and his job.

After awhile, they fell into the habit of leaving before they could fall asleep, and while it wasn't necessarily because they were worried about commitment anymore, it was easier to keep with habit.

Shawn was surprised, then, because Carlton was initiating something more serious than they had done before, and Shawn was surprisingly okay with it.

Carlton pulled Shawn back into the bed, and Shawn kicked off his pants. They were both more than okay with it.

5.

They were going on a vacation together. Carlton was the one to suggest the vacation. Shawn's pretty sure he has never seen Lassiter go on a vacation, and he was unsure if Lassiter would be able to handle going without work for a whole week.

Lassiter had a police radio installed in all his cars, he had a gun in his shower, and he'd exposed himself multiple times to chloroform just in case it could help him be better at his job.

The inability to be able to abstain from working on his job even on his time off was what dissolved Carlton's marriage in the first place.

Shawn was pretty sure his doubt was founded.

It was just a vacation, and, after repeating that several times to Carlton, Carlton had reluctantly agreed to leave behind any radios or reports, but he stated baldly that he wouldn't leave his gun behind-but that was okay because Shawn never would have asked him to.

+1.

They were eating lunch on the bench across from the beach. Shawn had begun eating there with Carlton before they dated, and it was a daily period of time they tried to keep free of work or any distractions.

Today, they had been eating nachos of some sort because Shawn had said they were "made with five different kinds of cheeses, Lassie, that's more cheese than in Cuatro Quesos Dos Fritos", and Carlton was feeling indulgent.

Carlton hadn't meant to say anything, but Shawn had been laughing uncontrollably at a joke Carlton had told, one he knew for sure wasn't that funny because he'd told it before and hadn't had anyone laugh as hard, eyed crinkled in amusement and spittle on his lips. Shawn's hand was bracing him on Lassie's thigh, and Carlton didn't realize he'd said it aloud until Shawn's eyes softened and his lips pulled even further past his already wide grin.

Shawn patted Carlton's thigh and said, "I love you, too, Lassie" but Carlton already knew.

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